


it's all over now, baby blue

by cicadas



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Developing Relationship, Eating Disorders, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hospitals, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mentioned Bulimia, Recovery, Relapse, background deacury, everything hurts but there's a light at the end of the longest tunnels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-16 10:12:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18689413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicadas/pseuds/cicadas
Summary: He met them all in a rehabilitation centre in south Manchester. A step down from hospital for some, a step to prevent it for others.Sometimes it feels like he’s the only one trying to recover.





	it's all over now, baby blue

**Author's Note:**

> On the off chance you're reading this in an IPU, they change the coffee from caffeine to decaf just after lunch.  
> 

He met them all in a rehabilitation centre in south Manchester. A step down from hospital for some, a step to prevent it for others.

Brian was a step down. One week recommended stay before he was able to go home. Most people there were at the base entry age - 18, young and easily influenced and crying at being given breakfast most days. For Brian, he took his cereal, ate it in those small bites he’d been told to do by a previous rehab nurse, and distracted himself while it settled into a physical weight in his stomach. He didn’t prod, didn’t purge, didn’t grip the handles of his cutlery and want to use them for any other purpose than what they were intended for. He’d been there too many times. He was in a centre like this for help, and he was going to get it.

He got it. He gained steadily over the week, not a lot, but enough for to be a healthy increase for his height and current weight. He knew he was doing okay, and he was proud. His third weigh in had a blond boy smacking him on the back in congratulations (he’d disclosed his gain over lunch, where he ate in the crafts room whenever it was open), and the name ‘Roger’ was spilled out along with his goal weight, current weight and desire to get home to see his sister. She wasn’t allowed to visit there, apparently. Too confronting. Roger scoffed at it, and Brian just nodded. He’d been told that before.

By age twenty-four, Brian had seen six counsellors, four ED specialists, two psychiatrists, been on two types of medication, and been to two inpatient units. One for his brain, one for his stomach. Though he felt they were always one and the same. The only difference was one was attached to a hospital, and his room in Manchester’s clinic was less locked-down. More relaxed. He supposed that’s why no alarms were called when some of the people in with him had breakdowns and started throwing things, or threatening to hurt themselves with the craft scissors, or tossed their hot drinks on the floor and crushed the styrofoam in their hands, furious and teary and stared at by everyone else in the hall.

He’d seen a code grey, a code blue, and a code black. He figured all of those could be called in Manchester, but they weren’t. No alarms were sounded when he saw the blond boy he’d met a day earlier - Roger - start a fight with a kid who’d taken the last hot chocolate packet from the drinks station in front of the kitchen. No staff rushed out to stop them, aside from one worried OT with a pamphlet and a crying girl in her arms, who seemed reluctant to let her go to get between two angry men. Skinny fingers gripped at long hair and more strands than usual fell out over the floor, nails scratched at forearms, and then they were tired out, puffing and heaving in deep breaths while crouching on the linoleum.

The offending boy ended up being John, and he sat with Brian to drink his beverage, sharing half the packet with Roger.

Freddie was being given his room the day he was discharged. They met eyes, brighter ones meeting sunken brown, and nodded, and Brian exited the doors with his suitcase and no ride home, knowing his place inside was going to someone who needed it.

 

They moved in together around two months after they all re-discovered each other, living and schooling and working around London. They had similar friends, similar interests, and similar weaknesses. Downfalls. They also all needed a place to live after the inconsistencies of their title of ‘housemate’ was pushed too far for their previous flat mates.

Roger was the one who found it in the end, searching tirelessly through newspapers while he worked with Freddie at the stall they ran - haute couture items for higher prices that sold to prissy, upper-class wannabe trendsters, as Roger described. He circled the hopefuls, and one pulled through. Brian roomed with him initially, but after four days, he switched with Freddie, and pushed his bed up the wall opposite John’s in the room next door.

He never told Roger the exact reason, but he’s sure he’s figured it out by now. Brian’s a light sleeper, and Roger never fully recovered. He knows now the bedroom door squeaks when it opens, and that the toilet flushes louder when the flat is dead silent. Sometimes Brian wonders if he still keeps muesli bars in his pillowcase - if Fred hears him unwrap them, or if he stays sleeping.

No, Roger hasn’t recovered at all. None of them have.

He notices the slim pen strokes of John’s handwriting over everything once he sees it on the cereal box. Numbers written by the barcode of each box or packet or tin they have in the kitchen - which isn’t much for four growing men. He sees it, and knows he should talk to John - he’s the youngest, and the most melancholic of all of them. He just doesn’t know if John will take a pep talk from someone who looks like Brian.

He stares at his collarbones in everyday conversation, eyes trailing along his jaw and the bone jutting out under his eyes, the way his cheeks suck in just slightly still. Brian notices it, but what can he do to stop it?

He takes a cup down from the cupboard and pulls out the box the tea rounds are kept in. His eyes scan over the barcode, and sure enough — _8kj._ Small looping letters, damning his efforts to ignore the numeric value of what he puts in his mouth. Efforts to ignore that there is a number attached at all.

He puts the tea back in the box, the box in the cupboard, and the milk in the fridge - the label of which he tore to hide the nutritional values box. (John wrote over it anyway, at the white section left behind where the paper tore.) He drinks a cup of warm water, because he may as well use the water from the kettle, and places a slice of lemon in, no honey. He thinks for a moment, and makes one for Freddie, too.

 

The lease comes up the same month Brian’s doctor tells him he’s dipped below the healthy weight range again. That he’s three pounds underweight, and it’s not much, but considering his history, she’d like him to start eating more high-kilojoule meals, and more frequently. She tells him to snack at the times he isn’t hungry, and to eat more rices and meats.

He reminds her he’s a vegetarian, and she tells him to reconsider his lifestyle choices. He leaves feeling frustrated and disappointed and in need of a hug.

He gets home that afternoon with an aching head, a sore body and the sound of someone vomiting in the toilet. John and Freddie sit on the couch, sipping at cups of tea, eyes focused on the telly, ignoring it.

“What’s going on?” Brian asks, dumbfounded at the lack of reaction from his friends. “Is Roger okay?”

He asks the second question because, in some part of his mind, he wants them to respond with ‘Oh, he ate something bad. It’s just food poisoning. He’s okay’. He wishes Roger were a female so this could be some kind of twisted morning sickness in the afternoon. He wants them to say that isn’t Roger in there at all. But it is, and when the toilet flushes and the tap runs for an extended amount of time, Brian knows he’s using the last of the soap to wash his hands.

He stands with last week’s blood test results - _deficient, deficient, below standard, deficient_ \- clutched to his chest, and Roger walks past him silently to get to the couch. Freddie and John shuffle to make room, and soon all three are watching whatever show is on with vague interest and complete ignorance.

Brian wants to scream at them all. He opens his mouth to, but his voice comes out quiet. “I went to the doctor today.”

Nobody looks up - it’d be easy to, he’s only a metre away from the telly set, tall enough to be seen anywhere - but Roger does give an “Oh?”.

Brian focuses on his eyes so he doesn’t start to sadden at the way his cheeks are puffing up again. He noticed it a few days ago, but it’s so much worse today. It tells him none of them have been doing okay while he’s been out of the flat. It tells him he should probably be inviting Roger along when he goes for walks, longer and longer each time, just to get away from the stale air of their place. He knows Roger’d just want to run, or he’d count his steps, or he’d decline thinking it’s a set up to get him to talk about his feelings, so he hasn’t asked yet.

Roger meets his eye. “You got something there?” He nods at the paper in his hands, and Brian eases up his grip where he’d been crinkling it.

He wants to say many things. He wants to tell them all he’s been doing great - the best out of all of them - and because of it he’s been trying to help them, but it hasn’t been working. He has limited energy, and sometimes he spends it all just keeping certain thoughts back, remembering calming tactics and trying to hold a conversation.

“I’m underweight.” Is what he actually says.

It gets Freddie’s attention, and he turns his chin Brian’s way, eyes not leaving the TV. “That’s good news.”

It’s a joke. It’s a joke, and he says things like this all the time to receive a weak laugh from Roger or a funny look from John, but to Brian, it makes him feel sick.

“It’s not.” He says. He can feel breakfast - cup of cornflakes, half cup of milk, bowl, spoon, same place at the table - in his stomach. “It’s not good.”

John hums. “No, it’s not. I’m sorry, Bri.” He says, but his eyes linger longingly at the knob of his wrists where they peek out of his jumper, and Brian knows he’s lying.

Just like he was about the saline mix in the bathroom. And the muesli wrappers belonging to Roger stashed in his room (so Brian wouldn’t find them in the bin and _assume_ ). And the scales missing from the bathroom, found under his bed, covered in an old pillowcase. (He’d said it was to hide it from the others. Brian knew it was so he could weigh himself at night, where no-one else could see, and no-one would hear). So that _Brian_ wouldn’t hear.

Brian looks at Roger’s red eyes, faded-yellow knuckles and twitching fingers. He looks at the hair Freddie’s been cutting shorter and shorter to hide how it’s been brushing out in the shower, clogging up the drain with clumps of black he hides at the bottom of the bin, under the empty deodorant cans and used tissues. He looks at the purple bags under John’s eyes - the way they seem to be welled up with tears, ready to break at any moment - and at his heavy cardigan, pulled up at his wrists and his neck, hiding his cold body from the rest of them.

Brian looks at his friends and wonders what he did wrong;  Despite the tender hands and gentle fingers he handles them with, they still come up bruised, and they don’t seem to care.  The more marks they have, the happier they seem. It tears him up, because it tells him he’s right in wincing at the jokes they make about skeletons, or organ failure, at the way they blow off his noticing their routine weigh-ins when he’s not there, or for crying when they had to spend more money than they had to get a plumber to fix the drain that had clogged in the shower because one of them (no-one would own up to it, even now) had been throwing up in there. It tells him he’s right in feeling like he’s the only one trying to recover.

 

He’s admitted into London General the day after his birthday.

They had a cake and everything - vegan, with expensive ingredients and fake egg made from mashed chickpeas. Brian received a gift and a hug from each of his friends. They sat around the coffee table and spooned at tiny slices of chocolate cake - cut-up strawberries to top it -into their mouths. Brian didn’t cut himself a slice. He was happy watching his friends eat.

That night, Freddie and John were two versus two on the movie they wanted to watch, and eventually won out Brian and Roger’s half finished drama for their horror. They curled up under two conjoined knit blankets, and Roger dragged Brian to his room—Brian’s old room—so they could play the record he’d gifted him.

It was Hendrix’s _Are You Experienced? —_ a record he’d had when he lived at home, but left behind when he moved into his first room at university. He’d spoken about missing it before - missing having his own copy to hold, that is - but didn’t think Roger ever put too much thought into it. When he held it then, it was like he had a piece of his old self back.

They played the record on Roger’s nicer player, a shiny red thing with several different knobs for different sounds and functions, and they listened, leaning back against the bed, arses on the floor, eyes shut.

‘Hey Joe’ came around, and Roger put his hand over Brian’s. They were cold, and bony, but felt so warm to him. Brian used his nerves to fuel his movements, and twisted his wrist so his palm was facing upward. Their fingers slipped between each others, and Roger leant his head against Brian’s shoulder.

“I wasn’t sure,” He said, eyes on the spinning vinyl, “I wasn’t sure if you were…”

His fingers started to tap, one, two, three, four (index, middle, ring, pinkie) against Brian’s knuckles, and Brian understood.

“I wasn’t sure either. I’m still not.” Brian felt Roger’s cheek try to find a comfortable spot against his shoulder, and it reminded him of how his mother used to complain he was to bony to sit on her lap when he was fifteen. He’d do it as a joke, because he was tall and old enough not to, but she’d always push him off her thighs and complain about him needing some meat on his arse, and they’d laugh. Reminded him of the first girl he slept with, who’d stuck her fingers in the hollow dips between his ribs and wanted to see if they’d hold water in there. She also laughed it off when he rolled over to hide his torso in the covers. (He didn’t eat the cake when they all did, but he made sure they all did. That was enough).

Brian said, “I’m not too sure about anything right now,” then he let Roger’s hand go.

He collapsed in the bathroom at eight AM the next day - hit his head on the side of the sink and started bleeding after he passed out. Apparently John was the one who called the ambulance.

Freddie doesn’t go with them when they take him in. He doesn’t visit the next day, either.

John explains calmly, quietly, that he’s afraid they’re going to see him and want to bring him in, too. Brian tells him that’s not how hospitals work, and John nods his head.

“I know. But he won’t come. It’s not you at all. He just…”

_He doesn’t want to see the reality of what he’s doing to himself._

The last part is left unsaid, but echoes louder than the words that are. Brian tells him its alright, and when the nurse comes around to tell him his bed is ready downstairs, the other two trail after him. He’s transported in a wheelchair, which he feels is unnecessary, but he’s not embarrassed by it. They take him on the lift down to a ward Brian hasn’t been to, because he hasn’t been to this hospital before, but one he recognises. There’s a clean, white-sheeted bed with a side table and a fluid drip set up, first one by the door, and he’s helped onto it.

John and Roger stand uneasily by the door, avoiding eye contact with the two very young girls in the beds beside him. They leave shortly after. Brian doesn’t blame them.

He finds out their names are Elsie and Donna, both aged fourteen. Brian makes idle chat with them about how they’re liking school, how long they’ve been here, and watches their demeanours turn from shy and friendly to sardonic and bitter when the food attendant comes around with cheese, crackers and a single serve of orange juice. He opens his partway and wonders what the world is coming to.

He spends that night waiting for the lights to shut off so he can cry unseen, but finds he doesn’t have enough fluids in him. He sobs, silent and shaky, into a hospital pillow he never thought he’d be sleeping on again, and wonder’s what _he’s_ come to.

He didn’t mean it this time. He was trying. He thought that’d be enough.

He’s moved to Stepping Stones recovery centre a few days later, and he struggles to scrounge up his savings to pay the entry bill. John comes by and speaks to the receptionist awhile, and he’s eventually let in for an early visit.

Freddie’s payed the excess for the stay. He still doesn’t visit.

 

He does well. He makes the same small gains as before, but his heart isn't in it. It’s all byproduct of nutrition absorption, junk food, lack of exercise utilities. He knows if he wasn’t being monitored, he’d be making tea with a capful of milk and no sugar for each meal, or lifting the heaviest books he can find over his head as makeshift weights so the ache in his arms returns to remind him he’s still doing something. That he’s still fighting his own fight, and he’s winning it.

He gags on his toothbrush one night brushing his teeth, and it brings up a little of dinner. It’s an accident - he’s never been one to try and get his food back up and into a toilet bowl after he’s eaten it (no, that’s Roger’s thing) - but he finds himself trying it again, just to see.

Twenty minutes later his throat is sore and stinging, and his head feels like it’s about to burst. He doesn’t want to leave the room to ask for a painkiller because he knows they’ll know, and it makes him feel so ashamed he puts the toothbrush against the back of his throat one more time. A reminder not to do it again. He doesn’t eat dinner the next night, and it puts him on the watchlist of every nurse in the place - their eyes follow him, noting down his every move, because they’ve seen his admittance records, and his gentle nature does nothing to hide his fluctuations in weight.

He’s tried the height excuse on too many people in the past to believe the fantasy it’ll work here. These people see people like him every day. They have charts and numbers and vials of blood condemning him. He isn’t fooling anyone.

 

Roger and John have a falling out while Brian is in rehab for the second time that year. He hears about it over the phone (an excuse to skip snack time, though he’ll be chased down with the food later) and consoles Roger through his sniffling.

“They’ve moved in together,” He says, snapping the words out. Then he wails.

Brian holds the phone away from his ear. “They’ve what?”

“The lease’s come up, and John’s gone and found some fucking where else to stay back in Leicester, and Freddie’s gone with him. I’m fucked, Bri!” Roger cries, and Brian isn’t sure whether he’s upset about the other two leaving, or whether he’s worried about not having somewhere to go himself.

“It’s alright,” He tells him, “We’ll work it out.”

He means it soothingly, but Roger just scoffs.

“We? Right on, Bri. You in a treatment centre and me on my way there? Good one. You’re a right laugh.” He says, and he sounds so horribly bitter Brian wants to hug him.

But his statement catches on the end of Brian’s thought, and he frowns, “What do you mean on your way there?”

Roger huffs a breath that turns to static in Brian’s ear. “It’s nothing. We’re all going downhill, all of us. Good luck to you.”

Brian hears the receiver clang as he hangs up. He doesn’t hear from Roger for three months after that.

He misses his birthday while he’s organising himself for discharge, and forgets to call in August to wish John happy birthday. Then he remembers he doesn’t have their number. He doesn’t bother trying to find it when September fifth comes around.

 

He’s one hundred and six pounds in November. It’s the smallest he’s ever been. He reads the numbers aloud, by himself in his small apartment with nobody else to hear. No nurses to mark it down for later review. Nobody to tell. He runs his his fingers over the downy hair covering his forearms, denser than the hairs he usually has there, and vows he’s going to grocery shop that afternoon.

He makes a meal for one, all greens and one egg (the yolk washed down the sink), and eats it alone with his radio as company.

Halfway through his third bite of wilted spinach, Brian breaks down in tears.

“Fuck,” He whispers, voice breaking at the end, and more tears drip past his eyelashes onto his cheek. “Fuck!” He repeats, nigh on hysterical at how tired he already is from mere seconds of crying. He shoves the plate across the bench top and drops his head into his palms.

He misses Roger. Of all of them, he misses Roger the most. How they’d talk at night, staying up late on the couch to do so since they didn’t share a room. How Brian would ignore the teeth marks on Roger’s knuckles and in turn he’d never ask about the imprints of the four prongs of a fork on the back of his hand, sometimes dug deep enough to leave pinpoint bruises on his frail skin.

Were they enabling each other? Probably. They all were. But Roger…He could overlook that fact for him. He _did_ overlook it. Maybe that’s why they shouldn’t be together.

Brian thinks back to what happened on his birthday, trying to see it in a different light, but it’s tainted by the memory of him looking himself in the eye in the mirror, then feeling his legs give way underneath him as he crashed to the floor. When he woke up a few seconds later, John was the one helping him to his feet, but Roger was the first one he saw. Wide-eyed in fright and concern, arms reaching out to wrap around him and help him out of the bathroom.

He’d taken his shirt off to press to Brian’s head, Freddie yelling at him to “Just grab a fucking cloth!” and all he could think about through the haze of pain and dizzy confusion was how concave Roger’s belly had become. He was always the most normal looking out of all of them - healthiest looking. Being surrounded by people taller, lither, with habits that led them to decline eating rather than doing so and purging it later, had to have been the worst thing for him.

Brian heaves a sob in to his hands, and moves away from the table to throw himself into bed. His food sits uneaten on the bench. He cleans it up the next day, feeling morose and guilty, and like he’s failed more than himself this time.

 

He gets a call from John less than a few days later.

He’s panicked, and talking way too fast, and Brian struggles to make out the words: Freddie’s asleep in their bed, not waking up. He’s tried everything - pinching, water, slapping, noises - and he’s not waking up. Brian clutches the phone tighter in his hands.

“John, call an ambulance.”

John’s voice is high and hysterical through the crackle. “I can’t, Brian, I’m drunk! They’ll think I did something! They’ll want to take me in—take us both in!”

“In where? John, pull your head out of your arse and call an ambulance. I’ll come up and see you at the hospital. Where’s the one nearest to you?”

“I can’t, Brian, I can’t! I’ve got—I’ve got another call coming through, I have to hang up.” He says, and he does.

Brian receives another call shortly after. He snatches the receiver off the hook and brings it to his mouth. “John?”

A high, soft voice comes out the other end, and he knows it’s not John.

“Roger?”

“Hi, Bri. John’s called me,” He says, not bothering with the ‘how are you’s. “I’m coming to pick you up.”

Brian looks around his bungalow at the boxed-in telly on the floor; the cutlery lined up on the sink, drying; his clogs by the door. They don't fit as well around the tops of his feet, so he’s been needing to wear two pairs of his thicker winter socks. People don’t notice the difference, so he isn’t fussed about it. The cold has a bite to it it didn’t before: He’s contemplated applying the sock method to his hands and invest in mittens, or gloves. Winter will start officially in two or so months, then he’ll have an excuse.

“Brian?”

He shakes his head, and his hair tickles his face. “I’m here.”

“I’m coming to get you,” Roger repeats, insistent, “Get your shoes on, and a book or something. I’ll be there soon.”

It sounds like the end of their conversation, and it has Brian flailing to keep him on the line. “Wait, Rog—”

“I’ll see you soon, Bri.”

“But you don’t know—” Where I live. My address. What I look like. (Please don’t stare).

There’s a pause that stretches into a sigh, and Roger says, “I live down the road.”

A car pulls into the driveway at eight minutes past six, and Brian has barely moved away from the phone on the wall.

When the door is knocked on, he calls out he’ll be there in a sec, fumbling about at his pockets for his wallet, or an antacid, or something to do with his hands. Then the door swings open, and Roger’s blond head is peeking around the entrance into his kitchen.

It’s dark, the way it always is after the sun goes down - he doesn’t like wasting energy on lights, so he lets the oven light and the TV be his only aid to not tripping over everything in pitch black - so he can’t make out every detail, but the face in front of him is still distinctly Roger. Only this Roger has bright, long-lashed blue eyes, wavy blonde hair layered at the ends, a pink blush tinting his cheeks and colouring his lips. There’s a steady layer beneath his skin coating his bones, giving shape to his face and arms and legs. He fills out the trousers he’s wearing, rather than having them bunch impossibly at his hips and groin where the extra fabric has nothing to latch onto. His blazer, a thick, paisley patterned velvet, sits neatly on his shoulders, fitting him rather than wearing him. There are foam pads sewn into the shoulders, Brian can tell, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that there’s more of him. Not a lot, but more.

He looks good. He looks healthy. Brian folds his arms over his chest, because he knows he looks the opposite of that, and that Roger’s eyes will be doing the same to him as he’s just done to Roger.

“Let’s go,” Roger says, waving his hand toward the door. He’s got his keys in that hand, and they jingle with the movement.

Brian looks down at his feet - covered in only one layer of socks at the moment - and back up at his friend. Rather, the friend he had, once. Do they still count as friends if they haven’t spoken in months? If one of them looks like they’ve been doing so much better without the other?

“Brian, let’s go,” Roger repeats, and his voice has an urgency to it that kicks Brian’s head into gear. He rushes off to his room to snatch another two pairs of socks out of his top drawer, the book from his bedside, and his dressing gown from the end of the bed. When he re-emerges, Roger has kicked his shoes away from the door and onto the kitchen tiles, ready for him to step into. It’s something he used to do whenever Brian was frantic, or overwhelmed, muttering about needing some time, or going for a walk - he’d move his shoes out somewhere Brian could see them, and he’d take the hint, slip them on, and leave for a while. Sometimes he’d bring Roger back something from the green grocers. Sometimes he’d even eat it.

Brian pushes his foot into the open back of his clog and kicks it into the back of his foot to secure it, then he does the same to the other.

“You look good,” He says, trying to meet Roger’s eye.

“Save it for the car, Brian.” Roger takes his arm and guides him out the door, like he might fall over without the help. Brian flicks the deadlock on his way out.

It’s two hours in the car from London to Leicester, Brian calculates. It’s six ten at night, which means there’ll be minimal traffic, and he trusts Roger to know the back roads should there be some kind of accident. He doesn’t even know when Roger got a car, but he’s had his licence since he was nineteen, so he’s had more experience—and enthusiasm—driving than Brian has.

He lets himself be handled into the passenger seat of a car Brian doesn’t know the model of, but can see is deep green, and eases his body and bundle of items into the thinly padded seat. It’s leather stretched across the seats rather than fabric, and he wonders if the car is cheap enough for it to be fake. He hopes it is. God, where are his thoughts at? He’s on his way to a hospital to see a friend he hasn’t spoken to in what feels like years, and he’s worried about his animal rights activism. He’s always been to good at distracting himself. Roger starts the car, turns the lights on, and pulls away from the curb in a jolty reverse. They spend the first ten minutes in complete silence.

Brian is watching the houses go by out the window when he feels a tap on his leg.

“Radio?” Roger asks simply. His eyes are on the road, back of his fingers resting on Brian’s pyjama pants covering his legs. He withdraws them to wrap them back around the wheel, and Brian follows them. They’re the same hands as before, still rough and knobby at the joints—Roger’s hands. Ones he’s held and rejected.

Brian shakes his head. ‘Can we talk?’ he wants to ask, but it’s too forthcoming, so instead he asks, “How have you been?”

It gets a laugh out of Roger. “How am I? What a thoughtful question, Brian. How long did it take you to think that one up?”

Brian shrinks back in on himself. His eyes drop down to the dressing gown in his lap, and he wonders if it’ll be distracting if he tries to pull it on. He’s not cold — he just wants to be covered up.

“I’m sorry,” Roger says, and he pats Brian’s leg. It’s the second time within a minute. “I’m sorry. I’m just worried. I don’t mean to be a dick.” His hand returns to the wheel once more.

Brian shakes his head. “It’s alright. Have you…Have you heard anything? John hung up before he explained anything.”

Roger stops at an intersection, and he’s quiet as he indicates, waits for the light, and turns down a side road.

“I haven’t heard from John since he moved out. I don’t even know how he got my number, to be honest. But I wasn’t going to not come up. He’s still—They’re still my friends.”

Bria nods. Then he frowns. “How did you get _my_ number?”

“Oh, that. I work at the place you get your teeth done. Started there about a month ago.”

“You’re a dentist?”

“Dental assistant,” Roger clarifies, “Don’t tell the receptionist I took client information or I’ll get fired.”

Brian feels a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “I won’t.”

 

They stop at Milton Keynes for gas and food. Roger fills up the car and hands Brian a fiver to head into the mini Sainsbury’s attached to the service station for a drink and sandwich meal. He isn’t hungry - he ate his boiled egg and cup of tea for dinner, swallowed down with a glass of water and half an hour of sitting on the couch to digest it properly - but he finds himself picking out a Sunny D and an egg and lettuce triangle sandwich because somehow he knows it'll make Roger feel better. He pulls his dressing gown on before getting in the car, and holds his snacks in his lap, ready to go. Roger asks for a bite of the sandwich once they’re back on the main road, and Brian unwraps it and holds it out for him. His teeth narrowly miss his fingers, and Brian snickers at the feeling of his lips against his skin.

Roger pulls back, laughing around the food in his mouth, and chews it up quickly so he doesn’t choke on it. “Bri, you idiot, I meant hand it to me.”

Brian just says, “Oh,” Because that would’ve made more sense, and then he laughs at himself. He doesn’t see Roger turn to him, but he sees him turn away.

“Good to see you smiling,” He says casually.

Brian nods. “You too.” He pauses, wondering whether he should repeat what he said at home. He decides against it, favouring to pick a piece of lettuce out from between the slices of white bread. Butter, mayonnaise, egg, salt, pepper, curry powder…what else is inside? The bread alone has to be at least a thousand in one—no, no, more if it’s got preservatives, which this would.

“You going to eat that or keep tearing it up with your fingernails?”

Brian stuffs the lettuce back in the sandwich. Bits of egg mayo stick to his fingertips, and he wishes he had a napkin to wipe it off. Another day, he might’ve licked it off. He holds his fingers up awkwardly in front of his face.

“Here,” Roger says, and Brian looks up to see Roger is motioning at him. He frowns. Roger takes his hand by the wrist and pulls it roughly up to his face, then he sticks his fingers in his mouth.

Brian feels Roger’s tongue slide over his fingertips for all of half a second before it’s gone, and Roger is pushing his wrist back towards Brian’s torso.

“That better?” He asks. The car up ahead stops abruptly, brake lights only coming on a second before Roger hits his own brakes, and he swears at them, throwing up a V at the front windshield.

He settles back into his seat, muttering a, “Fucking wanker,” and moves to switch the radio on. His hand hovers over the knob, then retreats without having touched it.

They sit in silence for a few minutes. Brian can feel Roger’s eyes on him the whole time, flicking glances over his knees that jut out far past where the seat ends; his hands clutching the plastic sandwich packet; his cheekbones that hide his eyes from view in his side profile. Brian starts to turn his way, a little frustrated, and Roger looks back to the road.

Brian sighs. He closes the lid of the food and places the juice (far too much sugar, especially that brand) on the floor between his feet. “What is it?”

Roger eases his foot off the accelerator as the light coming up turns amber. “What d’you mean?”

“You’re looking at me like you want to say something, so say it.” Brian says, wincing at how hard the words come across.

Roger doesn’t seem to notice. He readjusts his grip, and eyes on the stop lights above.

“I was going to come around, when you were in Stepping Stones,” He says quietly, “I’m sorry I didn’t.”

Brian kicks the juice between his feet. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. You needed help, and none of us were there for you. That’s not okay.”

The light turns green, and Roger eases on the acceleration.

Brian swallows. His tongue is dry. He should’ve bought water instead of damn juice. He keeps his eyes on the side of Roger’s face where they’re trained on the road. “It’s done you good.”

Roger’s jaw clenches, “Don’t, Bri.”

“What, you can’t say being away from us all hasn’t been good for you. You’re—”

“I’m what? I’m healthy? I’m healed? I look _so much better_ than before? What have you got for me, Brian, cause I’ve heard ‘em all.”

Brian shifts in his seat.

“It wasn’t you. It was none of you. I just needed to get my head right, and I did it. I’m sorry I didn’t include you in it.” Roger finishes. His tone has lost its bite, now tinged with a regret Brian recognises. One Brian has been carting around in the pit of his stomach for months. Taking up far too much room for him to feel like anything else can fit.

He’s tried. He’s been trying. He sinks further into the seat, and knows he’s lying. It feels like an ache deep in his bones where they’re brittling. It’s the smell of his own breath in his mouth, making him cringe and sip at his tea, (black instant coffee grains, mint flavoured chewing gum, unsalted rice crackers). It’s the lanugo over his arms and legs and chest, the soreness of his teeth and gums, the tenderness in his fingernails. It’s all of these things and none of them. Roger isn’t his reason, and never has been. But he’s been using him, subconsciously. Another reason for an apology. Another reason to lose his appetite.

Brian swallows again. His throat is drier than before.

 

They reach the hospital at eight thirty. It takes them ten minutes to find a park, and another ten to find out the right reception desk. Freddie isn’t in emergency anymore - they moved him out as soon as they had his stats from the ambulance - but the woman they speak to at emergency doesn’t know what ward he’s in. They wait for her to phone through to wherever she’s phoning to, get the right information, then wait for her to get the OK to send them through. They get it—ICU, bed 3, please be quiet.

They are quiet, the whole way there. They’d stopped speaking at some point in the car, and the only words exchanged were simple questions and answers. Brian follows Roger wordlessly as he makes his way through the twists and turns of a hospital he’s never stepped foot in, barely looking up at the signs above—Maternity, Surgical, Cardiology—as he walks. He doesn’t look back to see if Brian is following, either. They pass several beds filled with people that aren’t Freddie, several nurses and their desks, people in scrubs and doctors holding clipboards, patients walking around with IV poles or in wheelchairs in the halls. Brian is acutely aware of the looks they give him as he walks by. He tugs the side of his gown closer and increases his pace to trail closely behind Roger.

They find his room, and a nurse stops them outside the glass doors. The blinds are closed, but Brian can make out a man sitting in a chair beside the high bed. It’s John, he realises - his hair is cut off into a crew cut, making him near unrecognisable if he weren’t facing the side, showing his long nose and thin lips (cheeks still sucked in like he’s pulling them in himself). Brian steps forward to open the doors, and the nurse puts her hand on his arm.

“Sir, this isn’t your room. Are you needing to see a nurse?” She asks, polite smile not reaching her eyes - no, there’s too much she needs to do to be smiling at someone not on her rota right now.

“He’s not a patient.” Roger cuts in, voice flat.

The nurse blinks at him, but regains her composure quickly. “Oh. You’re visitors?”

“Yes, both of us. Can we see him?” Roger motions at the hand still on Brian’s arm with his eyes, and the nurse lets go.

“He’s resting.” She says, probably frustrated at the clipped tones Roger is using. Brian doesn’t blame her.

“Of course he is, we know how he came here. Can we go in, or not?” Roger snaps.

The nurse’s face sours. “He’s got a friend in at the moment. If he leaves within the next ten minutes, maybe you’ll get a minute or so before you have to leave. You really shouldn’t be here at this time at all. We try to have people clearing out by eight thirty.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” Roger says, then he reaches out and Brian’s hand is grasped roughly in his warm one, “We’ll be back tomorrow.” Then he marches off, and Brian is dragged along with him.

Brian doesn’t start crying at the reality of their situation until they’re in the car, parked in the same spot outside someone’s driveway on a road beside the hospital. Roger has pushed his seat back all the way, reclined it, and lit a smoke, dragging in and breathing out in rushed breaths with all the windows shut. He’s angry, muttering about the nurse they encountered, about John not giving them enough information on the phone, about Freddie being a fucking idiot and letting himself get this bad.

Brian listens to him talk, breathes in the secondhand smoke, and feels his eyes sting. They evolve into sobs the moment Roger turns to him, saying, “Don’t you think so? They’re both—” and his sentence cuts off there.

“Bri?”

His body hurts. He’s tired from the walking around the hospital, and his lungs are itching at the smoke in them. He feels like he isn’t getting enough air. He heaves in a breath, and his exhale catches in his throat.

“Bri, he’s gonna be okay, alright?” Roger’s hand wraps carefully around his wrist, pulling it away from his face. The fingers of his other hand wipe gently under his eyes, smearing the beginnings of tears from his lower lashes across his cheek. “He’s where he needs to be, and he’s gonna be fine.”

He latches onto Roger’s arm where it holds him, and they’re linked like that for a solid few seconds before Brian lets go. Roger doesn’t. He rubs his thumb carefully into Brian’s arm, through the thick fabric of the dressing gown and the long-sleeved thermal under that. It’s his purple striped one - his favourite because it makes his arms look so nice, and the colours are calming. It doesn’t feel as warm as it used to, and the fabric doesn’t stretch over his upper arms any more—they just slip through. Roger presses his thumb in, and Brian feels it. He looks up at Roger’s face, focusing on the cigarette hanging limply between his lips, and the despaired look in his drowsy eyes.

Roger holds his gaze for a long, drawn out moment. Then he pulls the cigarette from his mouth, leans forward and kisses him.

Brian gasps into Roger’s mouth, more shocked at how soft Roger’s lips are on his than the fact that he’s kissing him at all. It takes him a moment to register those lips are moving, opening slightly to press at his mouth and drawing away again, then coming back to do it again. Brian parts his lips, knowing they’re cracked and dry and unattractive, and pushes a shy kiss of his own onto Roger’s lips before he retreats, pulling back all the way to lean against the car door, eyes wider than before.

Brian watches him, waiting for a reaction. Maybe Roger is doing the same. He expects him to say something like ‘sorry’ the way they do in the cinema; apologising over and over while the other character (the girl, always a girl, never a guy with curly hair who cries when he eats something with sugar in) says its okay. If Roger were to apologise, that’s what Brian would say.

A mess of emotions wash over Roger’s face all at once, and it slackens into something akin to nonchalance. Brian frowns as he picks his cigarette out of the tray beneath the radio, and sticks it back between the lips that were just on his. He doesn’t apologise. Brian’s glad for that. He does say, “Let’s go home. We’ll come back early tomorrow. I’ll pick you up.”

The car shudders to a start, mimicking Brian’s breathing from before, and Roger hesitates over the gear stick.

“You going to eat that sandwich?”

Brian looks down at the floor at the sandwich packet. “No.”

Roger sticks his hand out, “Give it here, then. Don’t want you thinking about it the whole way home.” He says, and when Brian hands him the packet, he cracks his door and throws it through the gap.

The Sunny D rolls around between Brian’s feet the whole ride home, but doesn’t bother him. The thought that Roger will throw it out the window if he mentions it’s existence it comforting enough for him to not give it another thought. They stop briefly at Toddington so Roger can use the bathroom, and he slips it discreetly into the backseat once he’s alone in the car. Roger returns with a bottle of water and a pack of smokes in his hands, and hands him the water without a word. Brian sips at it the rest of the way home.

When they do pull up to Brian’s house, its quarter past eleven, and Brian realises he doesn’t have his key. Roger waits with him at the door as he pats his pockets, digging through them to bide his time and think of a solution as his cheeks heat up. He mutters that the window round the side is unlocked, and maybe he could climb up if he’s given a boost, that he can head on home. Roger tells him to get back in the car, and they drive about five minutes down the road before Roger’s pulling up again, at a place that’s a little smaller, with no front fence, but overall similar to Brian’s. It can’t be more than a fifteen minute walk distance between them.

“You’ve been this close the whole time?”

Roger takes the now-warm bottle of Sunny D he’d hidden in the back of the car and tosses it in the bin outside the house. “Since August. Mum helped me find it.”

Roger lets him inside, and Brian stands awkwardly in the lounge as Roger lays down a polar fleece over his couch, disappearing and reappearing with a duvet and what looks like a decorative pillow. It’s covered in sequins that make up the image of a zebra with a psychedelic pattern behind it. He shows Brian the bathroom and his blue plastic toothbrush in a cup by the sink, telling him he’s free to use it, and the kettle in the kitchen should he want tea when he wakes up in the middle of the night.

Brian looks up at that. “You heard me?”

Roger shrugs. “I was always up, too.”

They leave it at that.

 

He’s woken at half five by the smell of onions cooking. Brian’s back is stiff and his neck is cricked from sleeping slumped against the armrest - his legs too long to fit on the two-cushion couch, instead flung over the opposite end, one stretched out with his knee kicked up, foot on the floor. He isn’t well rested, but he’s awake. He doesn’t think he would’ve slept any better had he been in his own home, in his own bed with his multiple layers of blankets. He didn’t end up making tea at night - he slept the whole way through. He wriggles his toes in their two layers of socks, rolls his ankles a few times, getting them ready to stand on, then he sits up, feeling the familiar rush of dizziness spill into his head. He gives himself a minute to adjust before he stands.

The flat - rather, Roger’s section of a larger house - is quite nice now that he can look at it in the beginnings of morning light coming through the kitchen curtains. Things are decorated in light and dark browns, mixed with bright coloured fabrics, rugs and ornaments that have no place on stained wood shelves. Knick knacks, ticket stubs, frames without pictures, statues of elephants covered in gold and little jewels. One of them - a smaller one with a green tinge to the metal, looks very similar to something Freddie used to keep on his bedside table for luck. It even has the same crack in the tail, wrapped around with Sellotape.

He looks around at the room that combines the lounge, kitchenette, entrance, and the arch that leads to Roger’s bedroom and the small bathroom/toilet. Smaller than his own, but not by much. He brings his hands around his waist to tie up the dressing gown he slept in, but it isn’t there. He stuffs his hands in his pockets instead.

In the kitchen, Roger is doing squats. Up and down with a straight back, hands clutched together in front of his chest. They’re deep, which means he’s not doing them to get his heart rate up. He’s facing the stove, watching the pan cook as he bobs in front of it. Brian leans over the bench.

“Onion for breakfast?” He questions.

Roger dips a few more times, then stands, sticking his toes out and rotating his legs to stretch them, rather than shaking them out. “I’m low on testosterone.”

Oh. Brian pulls his hands out of his pockets so he can tuck his hair behind his ears. “For how long?”

Roger looks at him despairingly, then reaches beside him to snatch a tea towel from the bench top. He shakes it out, then hangs it over the bar of the oven. “Midway through puberty,” He says, and gives Brian a smallest twitch of a smile, “You’ve never wondered why my voice is so high?”

Brian clutches his elbows tighter and shakes his head.

Roger shrugs. “Well, now you now.”

He turns the burner off and moves the frying pan to a different corner of the stove. Given the way it fills the entire bottom of the pan, Brian guesses there’s about one and a half onions in there, chopped into little cubes. It’s a food he’s never seen Roger eat before, given the way it comes back up. It was always a defining factor for him when it came to choosing his foods, though after years, Brian figured he had mental list down pat. One he’d run through, check off and compare to what they had stocked in their cupboards at home, finding something that matched up and would mix well with water in his stomach.

Roger snaps his fingers in front of Brian’s face. “Hey, Daydream Believer, you listening?”

Brian’s eyes meet Roger’s—who looks amused rather than pissed off, thank God—and he nods quickly. The quirk of a smile from before appears again, less sardonic than before. It drops into something neutral the longer Brian watches him, but he saw it.

“I got a call from John. Freddie’s still in ICU, but we can go see him at eight. If you’re still wanting to come, we’ll leave at quarter to. Otherwise I can drive you back home, help you get in that window?” Roger motions to his own window with the spatula in his hand, and Brian smiles.

“No, no. I’m coming. Can I…Do you have some clothes I can borrow? I don’t want to show up in this again.” He gestures to the beige gown covering most of his form.

Roger nods. “I’ll eat this, then I’ll see if I can find you something.”

Brian’s just glad he doesn’t end the sentence with _‘That will fit you.’_

He lets Roger make him a cup of tea, capful of milk, no sugar, the same way he remembers Brian having it, and he drinks it in silence as Roger spoons tiny forkfuls of soft, fried onion into his mouth. He can tell by the shininess he’s added oil, maybe even salt. Brian can feel the sliminess of the substance on his tongue like a phantom limb. He washes it down with a gulp of tea, and it burns his mouth.

 

They park at the same house beside the hospital. There’s a few more cars on the street than there were at night, so Roger makes sure to park on the curb so they’re out of the way. He buys a cup of tea in a styrofoam mug from the cafeteria on the way in, and Brian doesn’t miss the way his hands shake where he holds it. He tugs at the hem of the shirt Roger’s given him, trying to pull it out and under the jumper to tuck it into his trousers - also borrowed - but it doesn’t give. He tugs at it until Roger pulls his hand away. When he starts off down a corridor, Brian follows.

Freddie is awake when they enter the room. There aren’t flowers allowed, nor would he have anyone to bring them to him - as far as Brian knows, he hasn’t contacted his uni friends for a long time, and his parents moved to live with Kash in Dubai where she studies business. They’re doing well there. He wonders if anyone at the hospital has asked John what their details are so they can contact them, or if John would know at all. He sits in the corner of the private room, eyes on his feet, looking morose—Brian doesn’t ask him.

The nurse tells them he’s lucky he came in when he did. The ambulance got him to the hospital on time to prevent cardiac arrhythmia turning into cardiopulmonary arrest, which Roger translates, gently, into ‘heart attack’. They’ve been monitoring his heart, which has been dipping under 40bpm when he sleeps, which means regular ECG’s throughout the night and day, and have inserted a gastronomy tube as well as an IV drip for fluids and electrolytes into each arm, and one in his hand for blood testing. Brian looks over at his friend and sees wires, cables and tubes. He sees brown skin turned pale and dry, sharp edges peeking out of a sea green hospital gown. For the first time since he met him, Brian can’t look past the illness and see his friend. The beep of the heart monitor is too loud.

John doesn’t look at them for the duration of their visit. Freddie is awake, but he’s out of it, so they can’t get a solid string of sentences out of them, no matter how hard Roger tried to crack jokes and make him smile. Despite his held anger about the two of them leaving so abruptly, he still has so much love for Freddie. For John…Brian isn’t sure about their dynamic as it stands, but part of him is glad no words are exchanged lest they develop into arguments. The most he gets out of the youngest is a curt nod at a compliment about his hair. Brian gets it, in a way. If it were him, and it was Roger…No, he shouldn’t think that. He knows Freddie and John are different. John has been under Freddie’s wing, following in his steps, taking his tips—he’s cracked out of one shell to form another. Five years of experience in six months of love. Brian looks between them and feels his stomach turn. He knows, he _knows_ that if he were to step on the scale in the corner, it’d read him out those damning numbers, going down millimetre by millimetre all over his body. He knows he’s putting himself in the same bed as the one he’s looking at, wires and tubes and all, and that it’s nobody’s fault but his own: He’s the one in control.

A nurse comes in, a short woman with brown skin and a brown ponytail, and tells them they’re wanting to ‘attend to their patient’. John gives her a wide-eyed look, asking if he can stay, at least wait outside, and the nurse looks nervously between all of them before shaking her head.

“It’s a bit…I’m sorry, dear. I know you’ve been here since yesterday, but some things we like do do with the privacy of the patient.”

She moves to the side of the bed, checking over the equipment there, and John follows her.

“Surely I can’t just sit where I’ve been sitting. I’ll sit outside, if you want, just outside the doors.”

His eyes dart around the room for some kind of support, and Brian can’t help but step forward to put a hand on his shoulder. “John, come on. You can come down to the cafeteria—”

“No, I don’t want to go to the fucking cafeteria Brian! I’m staying here!” He lashes out, but the hands that land on his side are weak, and he grips his wrists easily, holding them away from himself. “Stop!” John wails, and Brian pulls him to his chest. John crumples against him like paper.

“We need to check his kidneys to see if there’s been any prolonged damage,” The nurse explains, “We can’t have visitors around during. I’m sorry, but you can’t be in ICU at this time.”

Roger moves to Brian’s side, tugging an arm away from John so he can hold it in his. Brian lets him, parting his fingers so Roger can grip them tightly.

“Let’s go downstairs, alright?” Roger eases, and when he starts to pull, Brian takes John with him. The men leave the ICU room hand in hand—men, but Brian feels distinctly like a boy. John doesn’t stop moaning, low and pained in his throat, and Roger doesn’t let go of Brian’s hand. He’s thankful for the tight grip—he doesn’t feel tethered enough to hold himself up, let alone John, who is feather-light but emotionally heavy against him as they walk. He doesn’t pull away until they reach the cafeteria, which is closed for any meals but open for them to sit in. He places himself on one side of the bench-like seat, where Brian and Roger are on the other. Brian can feel the warmth of Roger’s thigh spread across the side of his own.

They don’t end up speaking much. Roger tries to explain what some of the technical terms mean, but John shuts him down, telling him he doesn’t need to hear the details. Doesn’t _want_ to hear the details, more specifically. Roger sits back and endures the eyes John casts over him, up and down, focusing on his upper torso where it disappears under the table, and the hands he has clasped in front of him on the plastic table top. Brian can feel the same eyes on his own body, doing the same thing. He just hopes they’re looking at him with discomfort and not jealousy. John gets up to drink from the water fountain, making sure his back is to them so they can’t see him drink, and Roger takes the opportunity to take Brian’s hand again.

It’s different than him holding his hand to lead him somewhere, or a simple gesture to comfort him. It feels familiar, like they’ve been doing this for years. Like its normal between them. Brian flexes his hand, and Roger rubs his thumb across the back of it. It’s confusing.

It’s even more confusing because Brian _likes_ it. He likes that he’s being touched so surely, without that tender hesitation everyone treats him with. Like he’s breakable. He _is_ , he knows he is, but he hates being treated like it. More so than that, he thinks he likes it because it’s Roger that’s doing it.

John returns, wiping droplets of water from his lips with the hem of his cardigan. He stops in front of the table to point between them. Brian can see red tinged around his fingernails where he’s been biting them.

“What’s this, then?” He asks.

Roger’s grip tenses against Brian’s hand, and he tries not to let his wince show on his face. “What’s what?”

John moves his gaze from their joined hands to their eyes, and his expression changes. Loses some of its sharper edges.

“It’s good to see you two.” He says, always a bit mumbled.

Brian gives him a small smile. Roger fills in his blank with a “You too, mate.”

They nod, slow, measured things, and when the silence falls back over them, it doesn’t carry the terseness of before.

 

After four days in ICU, the doctors have settled Freddie’s heart to a manageable bradycardia. He can sit, stand, use the bathroom by himself. He isn’t responding well to eating any type of food by his own hand, but he hasn’t tried to mess with the feeding tube either, which is marked down as progress. He starts talking to the nurses about regular, everyday things, and on day six, his second day in the regular recovery ward, he asks for a newspaper. Day seven, Roger drives Brian to visit him, and it’s the first time Brian’s seen him smile since…He can’t even remember. It pricks buds of tears into the corner of his eyes, and he’s leaning over the heavy sheets of the hospital bed with Freddie’s hands running over his back before he knows it.

“I’m sorry,” He says, lips pressed into the fabric, “I’m so, so sorry.”

Freddie tangles his fingers in his hair, pulling on the ringlets, and slides his hand under Brian’s chin, tilting it up so he can look at him properly. His brown eyes are warm, still set in sunken sockets, but they’re alert and bright, and Brian wants to cry again.

“I’m sorry too, darling.” Freddie tells him.

His designated room nurse comes in, but this time she doesn’t tell them to leave. Instead she asks if they’d like refreshments; “There’s a small staff kitchen beside the toilet just down this hall, with a hot water service and some teabags in the jars.” She also tells them if they ask nicely at the cafeteria downstairs, they might be able to get some milk at no charge.

Brian thanks her as she leaves, and notices Roger gives her a nod as well. When they meet eyes, Roger jerks his head again, motioning toward the hall. Brian looks back to Freddie, who’s hand has interlocked with John’s on the bed, and steps back toward the opening of the room. Roger takes his hand, like he’s been doing every time they’re close, and leads him away.

He takes one last look at Freddie’s bed - the one he’ll be in for at least another day before he’ll be allowed to go home, where they’ll send nurses out for outpatient treatment - and at the bowl of cornflakes John’s been nibbling at discretely throughout their visit, and he knows he’ll be okay. Maybe not forever, but for right now, he’ll be okay.

Roger leads him through the maze of halls, past the cafeteria completely, and out the main entrance of the hospital. They stand outside of the doors, still connected at the wrist, with no-one around to see but the air and the empty cars in the car park, the asphalt and the far-off trees. It still feels significant. Brian feels a surge of emotion in him at the blatant show of whatever it is that’s between them.

Roger drives them back to his place without asking if Brian wanted to come over, and Brian settles into a stool at the slim stretch of bench at the kitchenette without being told he was welcome to. The balance that has been settling between them since that last first call and the first one - the time then and the time now - seems to have solidified, and it feels easy. Roger makes sandwiches for lunch, leaving the bread off for Brian’s, and doesn’t dress the salad with anything for him either. He serves it to him on a small plate with a knife and fork, and invites him to eat on the couch with him.

Brian stares at first (he hasn’t eaten today, the way he doesn’t eat before 1pm every day) but once Roger takes a bite, nibbling with his lips pulled back so they don’t touch the bread, and chews at that same bite over and over, Brian figures he can at least put in the effort to take one bite, too. He thinks about the meat on Roger’s arms and legs, in his cheeks and around his hips, and clinks the fork between his teeth.

He thinks of John’s voice in hysterics on the phone when he called, shouting that Freddie wouldn’t wake up and that he was drunk—he couldn’t help because he was drunk, and he was worried they’d blame him. He remembers all the times he didn’t ask about that fact - that he never checked up with John about his drinking once, and God forbid he ask _‘how he’s doing’_ in _that_ regard.

He thinks about how he’s never asked the same of Roger, either.

He lets the fork slip in just a little further, feeling the lettuce speared on it touch his tongue, and he winces at the feeling of something so solid in his mouth. He scrapes the fork along his teeth as he pulls it out, and the first grind of the lettuce against his molars makes him gag.

Brian feels a hand on his thigh, but the burn in his cheeks stops him from turning to Roger, though he knows he’s looking.

“Just think of it as already broken down into nutrients in you. It’s already in your blood, in your muscles and your bones. Just acids and starches.”

Brian stops moving his mouth altogether.

“I’m probably not helping, but, that’s what helped me the most. Better than ‘try to focus on happy thoughts’ you know?” Roger continues. He shifts his hand down just slightly, so its more appropriately over his knee.

Brian chews a few times, grinding it as best he can, and swallows it in a glob of spit that seems to take forever to go down. 

“How did you do it?” Brian asks, feeling like there’s barbed wire in his throat. It swells, poking at his insides, and it breaks the skin when he swallows. He can taste the copper knowing there isn’t any there at all.

Roger’s fingers dig into his knee, but they relax just as quick. Brian’s just thankful they don’t let him go.

“I…I’m not fixed. Please don’t think I am by looking at me. There’s a lot going on in my head that I—” Roger inhales, exhales, “I’ve learned the best thing for me is to work with myself day by day. It fucked up all of my routines, doing therapy at mum’s,”

Brian frowns at that, but he doesn’t interrupt. He focuses on Roger’s words and the hand on his thigh as he talks.

“I had some lady coming in for an hour session right in the middle of the day, which was my peak…I don’t know, thinking time? I’d wait all morning till I got hungry, and I’d spend the middle of the day onwards thinking of what I was gonna,” He’s quiet on the next word, “Binge on. Then there’d be you, making tea at twelve at night, and I’d eat my muesli bars at that time. I lived at mums for about a week before she found this place here. Used to be her friend’s. But that’s not the point. The point is…I’m trying to say that—”

“You’re still trying?” Brian tentatively finishes for him.

He catches Roger’s nod in the corner of his eye, and he turns to see Roger already looking at him, eyes wide and face impossibly open. Brian’s eyes drop down to his lips - they’re parted, just slightly, and not dry like his own are. They’re pink, and sweet, if he can get away with describing a mouth that way, and there’s a breadcrumb on his bottom lip.

“Yeah,” Roger says, and Brian watches the crumb move as he says it. He wants to wipe it off with his thumb, but doesn’t know if he should.

“You’re not really listening, are you?”

Brian looks up. “I am. I daydream a lot, I’m sorry.”

“I know. More than usual, I’ve gotta say. I hope I’m not making things worse by talking about it.”

He starts to retreat his hand, and Brian reaches out in a flailing effort to keep it there, smacking his hand over the top and nearly knocking his plate off his legs in the process. It’s dipped between the gap between his thighs, and some tomato slices and bits of alfalfa sprouts have spilled onto his trousers. He moves to pick the plate up with his other hand, but finds Roger beats him to it - he brushes the salad back onto the plate, and Roger moves it off to the side of the couch, placing it atop the armrest.

His other hand turns, and then they’re palm to palm, Brian’s fingers curling instinctively in the spaces Roger’s made for him.

“I’m fine.”

“But you’re still struggling.”

“I’m dealing with it.”

“Alone?” Roger squeezes, and the grip hurts just a little.

“Rog, please don’t preach to me.”

Then he smiles, and Brian sighs. “What?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m trying to be serious and helpful and make you feel comfortable - it’s just really nice hearing you say my name like that.” He says.

Brian looks at the plate on the armrest - the fork must’ve fallen onto the rug, because it isn’t there - then at their hands on his leg, and up to Roger’s collarbones peeking out of his shirt. His eyes don’t make it up to his eyes. He isn’t quite brave enough.

“It’s your name,” He says quietly, “You’re just Rog to me.”

He looks up, then, but Roger’s eyes seem to be on another part of his face. His fingers start to tap, one, two, three, four (index, middle, ring, pinkie) against Brian’s knuckles, and Brian understands.

“Do you want to kiss me?” He asks, and Roger nods. “You can kiss me.”

Roger starts to lean in immediately, but Brian stops him, lightly tapping his shoulder. Roger opens his eyes, confused, but Brian just brings his thumb up to wipe the tiny breadcrumb from his lower lip.

“You had something there,” He says shyly.

“Oh.” Is all Roger says before he brings himself forward all the way, and Brian meets him the last half-inch so their lips can meet. It’s a chaste kiss - similar, but also very different from the one in the car - and it has Brian chasing more when Roger leans back. The couch dips as he leans, and he falls onto Roger a little given he isn’t holding anything to prop himself up. Roger laughs into his mouth.

“Clumsy.”

Brian flushes, but he finds he’s not embarrassed. “Shush.”

He goes to let go of Roger’s hand, wanting to wipe the sweat along his trouser-leg and hold Roger’s face, maybe - something sweet and lovely and not something he’s ever thought he’d want to do to Roger until now (he wants it now, though, very much). Roger grips his fingers tighter, and Brian finds his hold has nothing on the strength in Roger’s hands.

“Wait, Bri,” Roger whispers, an inch from his lips, “We should have lunch first.”

Brian’s face scrunches up. He’d just managed to forget about it, too (and hoped maybe Roger would as well). No, no—None of that.

Brian thinks up a million counter points, and a million flattering things to say as a distraction, but inevitably, he says, “Okay,” and suffers through another knife-cut piece of lettuce.

It hurts, because it’s not the right time, or food, or house, or _cutlery,_ for fuck’s sake, but he imagines himself back in IPU, or Ward 2 North, or Stepping Stones Recovery, or any of the places he’s been to get him to do exactly this, and knows he’d rather be attempting to do this thing - this thing others can do so easily, without a second thought - on the couch with Roger, in his shitty flat, than at any of those places with a thousand eyes on him, noting down the kilojoules he takes in with more precision than he does.

Thinking of it this way, he even enjoys the slice of tomato. He doesn’t eat the second one because it’s red and acidic, and he’s already eaten the one slice, he knows what it tastes like - he can fill the rest with tea. (Stepping Stones, IPU, bed seven, bed eight, has he lost count already?) ICU…No, he hasn’t gone that far. He won’t go that far. Brian plays out his most recent scale reading on the back of his eyelids, and sees nine seven underneath that red arrow. If he were to visit the doctor he’s been putting off seeing, she’d have a whole lot to say about the number Brian gives her when she asks his weight, but to him, its neither progress nor success. It’s five pounds heavier than he was a few weeks ago, and he’s not ecstatic over it, but he also hasn’t been purposely trying to lose it again. To him, that’s a win.

 

They hear that Freddie is done with outpatient treatment after nearly a month of back and forth phone calls and updates from John. John calls Roger, and Roger calls Brian, and he smiles into the receiving end of the phone as he’s told Freddie’s is smaller than they’d like but ‘it’s a start’. Nobody makes a big deal out of it, because they’ve all been there, and they know this is probably something they’re going to do in the future. The goal isn’t to be doing it again - the goal is recovery - but recovery is a process, and Brian knows from his own experiences there are a lot more downs and ups than people let on. They’re sharper, too.  The edges he’s cut himself on most times have been the sharp turns his ED has taken at different points in his life - heading steadily up into a steep decline, or grazing along the rocks up into a three month burst of freedom.

He hates it, calling whatever happens in his mind and body and stomach and teeth an _eating disorder_ , because it’s never exactly been about food. He’s sure if he applied his mind more he’d find a root cause, a memory attached and some sort of distorted body image and feeling of self worth. He doesn’t need to do that, though. He doesn’t need to know _why_ something is to know that it is. There are scholars for that.

Roger shifts beside him, having fallen asleep watching an astronomy program that he’s proclaimed is aimed at children, and Brian pulls the blanket out from under his feet to drape it over the top of them.

John and Freddie announce their engagement over the phone a few days after Roger cooks Brian his first meal with an unsafe food, and they sit and talk about it in the kitchen for at least an hour. In the end they decide at while it seems silly - especially so since what they’re wanting is illegal in two different ways - it’s what they need right now, and they call back that night to give a better congratulations.

Roger invites him over for dinner even though it’s already six and Brian’s already there, and they cheers to their friends’ fantasy wedding and to the wellbeing of them all. All, including Roger, and Brian himself. He swirls a bit of spinach around his fork, stabs into a piece of baby asparagus (wonders how and why Roger buys vegetables for himself) and shoves it into his mouth. Roger makes him laugh while he eats, which means he ends up finishing the minimal amount on his plate before he has a chance to count the amount of bites it takes. When he tells Roger this, he just smiles, warm and fond, and tells him to get another plate.

“You can count all you want if you do that,” He says, then he grins, warm and fond, “Dork.”

Brian just taps the fork against his bottom lip, and Roger shoves him.

“That was once! Once, May, I swear…” He trails off, and his annoyance is enough to keep Brian going forever. He brushes Roger’s hand off his shoulder.

“Got it for you though, didn’t I?”

“Mm, you did.”

“You going to thank me now?”

Roger lets out a loud “Nah”

Brian turns to him. “No thank you? Damn, no fake marriage on the books in the future, then?” He says, and he means it as a joke, like all the others. Roger seems to really think about it.

He sets down his knife and fork - butter knife, no serrated edges - beside his plate and crosses his arms. “If it’s ever legal in the future, Brian, I hereby—” He places an arm over his chest like they do in America, “—swear to give you a very real marriage.”

Brian looks at him. “Are you trying to one-up John’n’Fred?” He asks, noting the way their names blur together as if they’ve always been one unit.

“No, I’m promising you something.”

“Promising me marriage?”

Roger’s mouth twitches. “Maybe a general celebration of change of law?”

“Seems a bit impersonal,” Brian counters, placing bite number two in the left side of his mouth. Twenty chews on one side, twenty on the other, swallow. It doesn’t count as two, really, because he’s eaten before this, but he doesn’t dwell on that fact too long.

“I _promise_ ,” Roger says, placing an overdramatic emphasis on the word, “That on the day you try on a suit that you like—one that fits you properly—I’ll take you out somewhere. Somewhere the waiters have those tea towels over their arms and have posh accents.”

He looks so sincere that Brian’s heart swells, taking up so much room in his chest that it pushes a smile onto his face. He ducks his head, smothering it with his shirt, and tries to think of something to say that isn’t entirely bashful.

“I don’t mean you have to fill out a suit. Just fit it. However long that takes.” Roger continues, and Brian knows he’s saying it to ease whatever racing thoughts he thinks might be in Brian’s head. There aren’t any, but he appreciates the effort more than he could express in words.

His plate is a near empty display of a few asparagus stalks cut into thin silvers and some salt and pepper, and he’s eaten enough to tell himself he’s full, so he pushes it aside and hops off his stool to meet Roger on the other side of the bench. He wants to kiss him, but he hasn’t brushed his teeth, so he hugs him instead. 

He’s hit with the sudden realisation that he’s never actually hugged Roger right up until this moment. It makes his arms clutch tighter around the man’s small frame. A half second later, Roger’s arms snake up his back, and he pulls him closer, palms splayed out over the spike of Brian’s shoulder blades.

“I missed you,” He whispers, and Brian’s heart clenches again. It lets go when Roger adds: “Can’t believe John and Fred are getting married. Fucking _wankers.”_

Brian smacks him lightly, “No, they’re not.”

Roger just laughs, shaking his head to tuck it further into Brian’s chest. “No, they’re not.”

He pulls back after a long while, and his eyes are glistening under his lower lashes but Brian doesn’t mention it because he’s smiling, too. Beaming up at him like he’s the greatest thing he’s seen in his flat in weeks (Right sure better sight than that horrid zebra pillow).

“D’you think John’ll wear the dress? Or Freddie?” He asks.

Brian snorts.

 

The ‘marriage’ takes place just under a month later, at John and Freddie’s house near Tesco’s, up in Leicester. Brian and Roger gather supplies consisting of unsalted corn chips (for Brian), low-carb beer (for Freddie), cheap vodka (for John) and a pack of seaweed bites (for Roger).

Freddie wears the dress. A shawl, really, that slips down his back and catches on a spike of his belt. He takes ahold of a corner of the fabric and starts swishing it around, giggly drunk and flushed in the face, calling it his veil and whipping Brian’s legs with it, telling him to carry it for him. Brian stumbles after him as he marches off toward the kitchen, shawl floating out behind him in a shimmer of purple and gold, to get another beer. He offers Brian a vodka shot that he declines, and lights a cigarette on the stove that Brian also declines. Roger swoops in to suck at the end of the cigarette between Freddie’s fingers, and John takes the shot for him - a sequence of events that has Brian grinning, because he hasn’t been with the three of them in one room, bouncing into each others space in a way that can quickly become annoying. It’s an annoyance he’s missed, and now he’s in the middle of it, with John giggling into his side because he spilled alcohol down his chin and it’s stinging the cut on his lip, Roger working the smoke out of Freddie’s fingers and Freddie fighting him for it, calling him a daft cunt because the packet is “Right over there!”

Brian doesn’t touch the alcohol. He knows the effect even one drink will have on him, despite being curious as to how his friends are feeling. Some part of him wants to dip into that same headspace of dopey, smiley silliness, but it’s not a pressing urge, so he’s content with a cup of Freddie’s ‘special coffee’ and Roger’s seaweed chips Roger has completely forgotten to eat. He finds he can’t chew them properly because of the way they dissolve in his mouth, and then finds he doesn’t quite care. He can count tomorrow.

Brian pops another chip in his mouth, and the boys come rushing back into the lounge with the entire bottle of Vodka in one of their hands, yelling at him to open his mouth and for Roger to pinch his nose. He opens his mouth to laugh, and he’s accosted by John’s skinny frame, throwing himself between his legs where they’re spread out on the couch, yelling, “Got him!”

Then he starts cackling, and if Freddie was supposed to waterboard him with a splash of Tesco-branded vodka, he doesn’t. He starts laughing instead, swaying on his feet and clutching onto Roger’s shoulder with a vice grip. Then he stops, and his face goes so serious Brian wonders what’s just happened. He moves to sit up, but John is limp against him. He looks down, and takes in his closed eyes and slack mouth pressed into his torso—asleep.

He looks back up at Freddie, and that impish grin is working its way back onto his face. “I’m married.” He says sincerely.

Beside him, Roger nods. “Yeah, mate. Congrats.”

“No, I’m married! I’m going to have a bloody house and a home life and I get to clean things for my husband—my _husband!_ Oh, John, John! Wake up you scrag!” Freddie pounces onto him, adding another hundred odd pounds already on top of Brian. Brian goes to protest, because it is actually hurting his ribs, but Freddie looks so happy that he leaves him be.

John grunts into Brian’s chest, and Freddie starts rolling him to and fro, rousing him from his drink-induced sleep. “Scrag, scrag! My husband is a scrag! Get off Brian, dear, for God’s sake.”

Still standing, watching them all, Roger meets Brian’s eye, and he smiles. His eyes are glassy, and he’s swaying on the balls of his feet - one of his own shoes on one foot and one of Freddie’s slippers on his other foot, for some reason - but it’s the same smile he sees nearly every day. Bright, open, impossibly sincere.

His chest aches, his lungs too big for his ribcage in that moment, and it has nothing to do with John being tugged around on top of him. John, who eventually rolls off and lands on the floor with a shocked grunt-turned-laugh, the result of Freddie’s insistent pulling of his arms. Freddie sits down on the floor with him, and Brian is free. He uses the opportunity to step up and over the pair, ending up beside Roger on the rug.

They leave pretty soon after that—John fell asleep a second time on the floor, and Freddie decided to drag him off to bed, with Roger and Brian’s help, so he could sleep it off. He ended up Leaving Brian and Roger to do all the carrying, and when they got to the bedroom they found Freddie splayed out like a starfish on the covers, snoring. They managed to get them both into bed without much of a fuss, despite Freddie’s whinging and John’s random whacking whenever he was stirred awake. Roger left a note on the bench thanking them for the stay, and congratulations, and Brian added an _‘ & Bri’_ next to the _‘From Roger’_ at the bottom of it.

Roger can’t drive, but Brian has his keys, and it seems to be a regular stick, so he takes the driver’s seat and puts the radio on for Roger to sing to for the duration of the drive.

Roger calls him the next day to tell him their note was appreciated, and that he’s left his shoe behind.

“You’ve lost your shoe?” Brian repeats.

“Yeah, I have. I mean no, cause I know where it is. It’s in Freddie’s bathroom.” Roger tells him, voice crackly through the receiver.

“Why were you doing that exactly?”

“Er—Comparing foot sizes.”

Brian laughs, shaking his head. “ _Just_ feet?” He teases.

Roger groans on the other end. “You toss. But hey, at least now I have an excuse to visit again soon.”

Brian pinches his smile between his teeth.

“You don’t need an excuse, Rog. Just call and visit.” He says, like he’s been the prime example of doing just that.

“I know I don’t need one, but I’d like one. For now, at least.” Roger says, and Brian understands. Then he adds, “How are you doing? With…and such.”

“And such?” There’s a pause. Brian lets his lip out of his teeth. “Oh, that ‘and such.’”

Something over the phone rustles, and Brian cringes at the sharp sounds it sends into his ear.

“I’ve been doing alright.” He says, and it’s the closest thing to the truth he can put in words.

“Alright?” There’s another pause, “Yeah, I can do with ‘alright’.” Roger says, and the rustling returns - Brian realises it must be his hair over the receiver as he nods.

Brian almost starts to look around for him to brush it away, then shakes his own head at his stupidity. He holds the receiver tighter to remind himself its there, that he’s talking on the _phone,_ and speaks into it. “Thanks for taking me up there, by the way. I didn’t say last night.”

Roger laughs. “Yeah, I know. Thanks for not wrecking my car with your driving.”

“My driving is fine!”

“So you say, but all the other thousands of cars on the road all disagree with you.”

Brian laughs, and there’s a warm silence between them. He wraps the phone cord around his finger a few times, watching it tangle and bounce back into a spiral when he releases it.

“Did Freddie get in trouble for drinking?” He asks eventually.

Roger clicks his tongue. “Didn’t say. Didn’t ask. I don’t think the docs will be too happy, though.”

“I hope he hasn’t done any damage.”

“He’ll be fine, Bri. Don’t stress.”

“I’m allowed to stress.”

“Nope, I’ve banned it. I’ve gotta head off now, too, but I’ll see you.”

He doesn’t say when, or where, in typical Roger fashion. Brian gives a quick goodbye, and hangs up the receiver once he hears the dial tone. He knows he’ll see him later that night, unannounced, holding a carton of milk from the store for Brian’s fridge and a smile on his face.

 

Brian hits 113 pounds on the first day of winter. It’s a positive improvement on his previous 109, but he doesn’t feel that looking at the number beneath the red line of his scales.

He steps off, then back on. Same place as before. He steps off, back on. Off, on. Off, on. The arrow ticks up to that same number each time, without fail, and it has Brian’s gut stirring and his throat closing over. He swallows forcefully, and steps off the scales. He lets his feet keep him upright on the cold bathroom tiles, and flexes his toes. They’re looking a little better - for a while they had a kind of bruised, blustery look to them because of all the sock-wearing and scuffing about. Feet are already unattractive without adding problems to them. He looks back at the scales, where the red arrow sits neatly along the line leading to 0, and he presses a tie down on the corner to watch it jump.

Then he packs it up, shoves it under the kitchen sink with his cleaning supplies, and doesn’t think about it until after Christmas.

He visits his mum and dad for the holidays, sitting through their well-meant comments and compliments, drinking tea in front of the telly and nibbling at her home-baked shortbread. He visits, but he doesn’t stay: He has Roger waiting for him at home. Making a mess of the place, no doubt. He kisses his mum goodbye, shakes his dad’s hand, and wishes them a merry Christmas Eve. At home, he gives Roger a kiss, too - this one a lot less modest, and as easy as all the ones before.

Freddie is on a strict no drinking ban, so there’s a pot of tea on the coffee table and the kitchen bench to make up for Freddie’s desire to have a Christmas Eve drink - a custom he’s wanted to implement in his own home forever, and now can’t. He doesn’t let his annoyance show, choosing to vocalise it at several different points during the night. John doesn’t touch the liquor, either, Brian notices. There’s a small bottle of brandy, courtesy of Roger, and two glasses beside it, but the one laid out for him stays empty. He finds out John’s first AA meeting was a few days ago, something that took him several weeks of expelling nerves and self-talkings-to to be able to attend, and he’s been managing alright so far. He didn’t talk, but wasn’t made to, and for that fact alone he’s attending another meeting once they start up again after the holidays.

Freddie burns the potatoes trying to fry them, so their meal lacks a hearty meat substitute, but to Brian, the greens look appetising as anything. The others grimace at it, but he knows it’s because their plates are filled with cooked carrot and pumpkin, boiled peas and fresh tomato, instead of the fancy roasts most people have. Once, they’d’ve been disgusted at the fact that there is food in front of them at all.

They grumble about his hippie vegetarianism throughout the meal, but they’re _eating_ , and Brian eats along in silence, grinning on the inside. Apparently the outside, too, given the way Freddie raises his eyebrows at him.

“Laughing at our pain, hm?” He questions.

Brian just shakes his head. Saying it out loud would make them aware, and Brian’s just glad for the knowing to exist in his own head. He points his fork at Freddie and shakes it up and down. “You’re the one who burnt the spuds.”

The table erupts into argument. Brian sits back and eats his peas. Across the table, he can see Roger’s eyes squinted up into a smile. He taps his fork against his bottom lip. Brian wipes his mouth with his hand, finding nothing there, and Roger breaks into a grin.

“You git.” He says. The sound of John shouting about oven temperatures and gas gauges drowns it out, but he gets his point across.

They wave Fred and John off around nine, and then Brian is alone with Roger in his flat. His flat, because as the others told him, it’s neater and emptier and most apt for a gathering. He wasn’t sure he agreed on their points, but he let it happen. Roger decorated the place while he was at the library, and Brian came home to a warm, clove and orange-smelling home. It was something he could get used to coming home to. Especially since Roger had decided to try on his apron, and looked ridiculously endearing with the fabric reaching his mid calf and the string tied in a bow around his blonde hair. He’d called him a housewife in jest and been threatened with a spatula, but he meant it. Maybe not the wife, or the house, but the notion of it. The notion of Roger in his kitchen—in his _home_ , milling about like he’d been living there for years. He could definitely live with that.

Christmas Day goes by relatively fast. Roger spends it with his mum and sister, and Brian spends his morning staring out the front window with a cup of coffee - black, this time.

He stares at the glass, and feels each part of himself, his home, his possessions, his worries all as one lump sum of energy, like something tangible within him. For once, it doesn’t feel overwhelming. Brian’s back stretches at the lack of weight pressing down on it, and he breathes easily into the cold morning air seeping in through the crack in the window. He eventually shuts it, turns the heat on high, and gets ready for the day, but that calm feeling doesn’t leave him. He has three meals that day; Lunch, dinner, fruit afterwards, and biscuits with tea at night.

Roger comes over at six for an unprecedented ‘brief visit’, to give him his present.

It’s a stereo film camera, wrapped with a purple bow. He takes it gingerly from Roger’s hands, feeling completely incompetent at not having bought anything to give him in return.

Roger just shakes his head. “This is from me to you. It’s different from a normal camera cause the images develop in twos. Same, but different. I thought it might help you to see things differently at times.”

Brian’s eyes move from his tight grip on the box to Roger’s eyes, and his heart swells with the force of a tidal wave, spilling over into his mouth, prompting the words he has hidden in his ribcage out into the air.

Brian throws his arms around Roger’s shoulders and tucks his face into his neck.

They’re in Roger’s bedroom, playing Hendrix on his record player, Roger taking that leap to lean his head against Brian’s shoulder.

They’re in the car, angry and sad, pressing their lips up against one another without any kind of certainty behind it, a cigarette burning away beside them.

They’re right where they are, copacetic and healing and in the entrance of Brian’s flat, standing beside a pile of shoes with Brian’s arms wrapped around the only person he’s felt himself around in a long time.

“I love you.” He says, and he means it more than anything he’s ever confessed until this point in time. He says it, and he feels Roger’s hands wrap around his sides, squeezing in impossibly tight.

“I love you,” Roger says back to him, “Shit, I love you. I have for so long. I wasn’t ever sure...”

Brian doesn’t hesitate. “I’m sure. I’m sure, Rog.”

Against him, Roger shakes. A heavy inhale and a rocky exhale, then he relaxes. His arms tighten around Brian’s waist. He pulls his face away from Roger’s neck to look him in the face, and Roger’s eyes are glistening and slightly wet but he doesn’t look upset.

“I never thought—” He starts, then finishes there, his sentence up to Brian’s interpretation.

Instead of answering, Brian ducks his head down and presses his mouth against Roger’s. It’s sweet, and soft, and so slow it’s almost sensual. Roger moves his lips in lazy drags along Brian’s, taking his time to press kisses into his mouth, one after the other. Brian reciprocates, moving one of his hands to slide under Roger’s jaw, cupping it and tilting his head up so Brian can kiss him deeper.

Roger’s tongue dances along his, then he pulls back, eyes half-lidded and mouth still parted.

“Shit,” He says under his breath. Then he starts laughing.

Brian keeps his hand on Roger’s face, inching it up his cheek so he can rub circles into his temple with his thumb.

Roger tilts his head into it, nuzzling his face into Brian’s palm.

“What’s funny?” Brian asks.

Roger shakes his head minutely, “Just happy.”

Brian presses a gentle kiss to Roger’s forehead, purely because he can, and his skin is warm against his lips. “So am I.”

“I love you,” Roger repeats, and it sounds like a promise.

Brian wonders how long he’s been holding back those words, waiting for Brian to say them first. He presses another kiss to Roger’s head, then a few more in quick succession, causing Roger to giggle and wriggle out of his grip. Brian holds onto him. He’s got him now; he won’t be letting go.

They move Roger’s things into Brian’s flat - again given the reason that it’s ‘neater and emptier’ - a few weeks later. Roger’s stupid elephants sit on his TV set and campy zebra cushion on his couch; Roger himself in the kitchen wielding a spatula and a cigarette. It feels like he’s always been there, singing to his records and cooking onions on the stovetop. Feels like home.

 

Things become easier after Roger moves in, but never easy. Brian reaches a weight goal set by the doctor he used to see when he lived in a shared flat with the four of them, and he finds he’s indifferent viewing the number on her scale set. She tells him he’s doing well, and that he should still consider changing to an omnivorous diet. He thanks her, and politely tells her he won’t be taking up that advice. She gives him a slip for a blood test, and he makes sure not to crumple the paper in his hands on the walk to the bus stop.

He relapses shortly after he passes 140lbs, and it hits him tougher than he thought it would. Roger picks him up from the bathroom floor after attempting to throw up, and Brian does the same to Roger weeks later (only Roger was successful in his attempt, spit on his chin and red in his eyes). It’s a back and forth - a vicious cycle they’re all too familiar with. A common enemy that just won’t leave them alone.

Roger slips up now and then, purging after large meals out or takeaway that is particularly greasy, but he tries to make up for it the next day each time, reading through his list of reasons and taking his time to chew and swallow the meals he eats. It gives Brian more courage to keep at his own fight than Roger being a perfect example of recovery would. Because no-one ever really recovers; they just keep fighting, every day. That’s what he does. Some days are easier than others.

Some days he’ll have ice in his mind and in his limbs, freezing him up each time he gives the slightest thought to consuming anything resembling a solid, and it takes longer and longer to thaw out of those days. He does it, though. He pushes back, and he gags on his food sometimes but he eats it, and suffers through the feeling of something sitting heavy in his stomach until it doesn’t feel like suffering any more.

Roger takes him out on their promised date on a Sunday. It’s a cool night, light pollution blocking the stars from their view but giving the sky a lighter blue appearance as it hangs over them. Roger drives them to the nicest place he knows about, and bumps into Brian getting out of the car because he tries to open the door for him. Brian steps on Roger’s shoe trying to open the restaurant door for _him_ , and they giggle like schoolgirls at their attempted—failed—shows of chivalry. They treat the night with less seriousness after that, and Brian smiles at Roger through peeks over the menu and foot taps under the table.

He orders something called pearl cous cous - a food he’s never heard of before in his life but is assured by the waiter is vegetarian - with side vegetables, and a water. Roger gets a steak.

Brian knows it’s partially because it’s so difficult to get back up, and he’s been having trouble with eating out, but he focuses on the juxtaposition of their meal choices instead. Roger finishes his food first, when it comes, and Brian sits and eats as Roger pointedly looks everywhere other than his plate as he talks to him throughout it. It’s partically for him, but partially for Roger, too - talking as a distraction, giving himself a reason to stay at the table and not disappear to the toilets. Brian listens as he eats his cous cous, which he thinks are like chickpea-shaped jellies, and feels Roger’s foot rest atop his partway through a story about a new patient he’s been attending to at work. It doesn’t move from his foot for the duration of Brian’s meal.

They pay, drive home, and make tea in comfortable company, minimal words exchanged - drained from them by the people talking in the room all around them during the night. Brian showers and emerges dressed in a pair of Roger’s pyjama bottoms and a white longsleever to find a cup of tea for him on the kitchen bench.

Roger comes up behind him, still smelling like cologne and dressed in his suit - he sleeps naked when it’s warm enough, Brian found the first night they slept in the same bed, so any pyjamas he didn’t wear were fair game - and drapes himself over Brian’s back.

“I love you.”

Brian smiles into his cuppa.

“Love you too.”

Roger pushes himself further into Brian, and Brian knows he isn’t imagining what is being pressed into the back of his thigh.

“Love you,” Roger repeats, and Brian rolls his eyes.

“You’re insufferable, you know.” He says, a tad amused at how easy Roger can get going.

Roger moves his hips a little, and Brian hums.

“You’re gorgeous,” Roger murmurs, goon for sexy and ending up endearing.

Brian raises an eyebrow, “In my pyjamas?”

“ _My_ pyjamas,” Roger clarifies, and Brian turns in his grip so he can face him - watch all the little twitches of his face that show when he’s thinking, and the baby blues of his that give away whatever he’s feeling.

Brian bites his lip to stop a smile and waggles his eyebrows. “Does me being domestic get you going, Rog?”

Roger groans. “No, but you do.”

“So technically, that’d be a yes?”

Roger pulls him by the waist, tugging him closer to him. “Stop being smart n’ let me fuck you, please?”

Brian considers teasing him for longer - really considers it, because needy Roger is so fun to mess around with (the lengths he’ll go to for sex astound him at times) - but eventually relents, and Roger drags him to their shared bedroom with Brian’s tea still sitting on the kitchen bench.

The sex is familiar - nothing they haven’t done before, with the exception of it being a different date on the calendar- and it’s everything Brian could want from Roger. He’s gentle, careful, handling him like he’s something precious—something to be taken care of. It’s the only time he’ll let himself be treated as such, and Roger does a beautiful job of it. He also makes a lot of beautiful noises while doing it, too.

He rolls fluidly into Brian’s body, hitting the right type of nerves on each odd thrust, and it has Brian’s heavy breathing carrying little sighs and hums of pleasure for only Roger to hear. He taps Roger’s hand where it’s digging into his thigh, holding him in position, and Roger takes the hint to hold it. It causes them to lose their rhythm momentarily, but they find another one quickly. One movement rolling into another. The tail end of one good feeling leading to the beginning of another.

Brian feels the steady build of pressure in his body, growing and thrumming under his skin until it hits that point - a sharp edge that frays the coiled wire inside him. He finds his release in the feeling of Roger’s own, and he groans - exertion laced through the euphoria of his high. Roger mimicked the sound, slackening his grip on his thighs and slowly letting him down. They rest there for a moment, letting their skin cool and breathing settle back down. 

Roger pulls out of him, and Brian starts to drift at the feeling of a cold cloth against his backside, then his thighs. A finger pokes his nose before it’s kissed with soft lips - he tucks his face into the pillow to hide. Moments later, Roger is slipping under the quilt beside him, kissing the nape of his neck and the knob at the top of his spine and his clothed shoulder.

“Love you,” Brian says in lieu of a goodnight.

He’s asleep before he can hear Roger’s reply, but he knows without a doubt it would’ve Roger’s usual reply to that statement - one he hasn’t wavered on.

Brian goes to sleep and dreams of Chinese market stalls, little boats with sails too big, and of stealing bags of chickpeas from Tesco’s. He has a suspicious feeling it has to do with the chickpea-looking food he ate, but he can’t be sure.

He wakes to a chilly bedroom, cold feet pressed against his calves, and Roger’s hair in his mouth - the same routine as every morning. He rolls over, wraps his arm around Roger’s torso and pulls him close. He’ll have to let him up when the alarm goes off at seven, dragging him out of bed and off to work, but for now, he has him all to himself.

He never thought he’d be this type of person - enjoying morning cuddles with another man (not that he’d fantasised about women, either) or looking forward to a cooked breakfast in the early hours. He used to stay up as late as he could to try and sleep through the morning, losing his first job because of his habit. He dreaded imagining someone sharing his bed, touching his body, feeling his bones poke into their skin if they laid too close together. Now, he looks forward to it. Revels in it—soaks the feeling deep into his being and lets it settle into his bloodstream. A type of contentment he’s had hints of before, now a constant presence in his life.

Roger stirs in his arms, and he holds him tighter, lulling them both back to sleep with whispers of ‘not yet, stay a bit longer’.

When the alarm does go off at seven, Roger rolls out of bed and leaves Brian to snuggle into his side of the bed where it’s still warm. He gets ready for work, dressed in black slacks and a blue polo shirt that has a scratchy collar, and kisses Brian’s shoulder where it peeks out of the covers as a goodbye.

Later, Brian makes breakfast in his dressing gown and two layers of socks (his slippers are somewhere around, but elude his vision when he looks for them). He’s not ecstatic about cooking - never has been, probably never will be - but he doesn’t dread it. When he eats, he focuses on the crack in the open window, breathing in the cold winter air through his nose, and each swallow is easier than the last.

It’s his form of routine, and lack of one. His own personalised normal. He gets through each day, kicking and screaming or smiling freely, or unmoving from bed on the worst ones. Regardless of what happens, he gets on. To him, that’s good enough.

He read once that in Japan, a broken bowl or cup is repaired with gold, as it’s the imperfections that make it beautiful. In the quiet of his own mind, Brian likens that notion to himself. He has gold in him, hidden among all the parts of him that functon. His friends see that; He sees the gold in them, too.

 

By the end of February, John is two months sober. They all attend a celebration for it on his eigth meeting, and Freddie has colour in his cheeks as he nibbles on a complimentary doughnut.

Roger decides on regular therapy after swearing off outpatient or any kind of hospital help the last time - he attends once a month, the first few with Brian out in the waiting room for comfort.

Brian does a session, but it isn’t for him. He knows all he needs to know about himself. If he gets overwhelmed, he goes to the library, and reads until they close at eleven. Roger always has a tea waiting for him when he gets home, even if he’s in bed by the time Brian walks through the door. He’ll drink it cold on principle.

He turns twenty-six on a Tuesday, and spends the day with Roger at a park a short drive away, walking around the lake and taking photos with his stereo camera. Freddie and John come by that afternoon, bearing a cake that looks like it was made by a toddler, but it has canned peaches atop it, so Brian gives it a pass.

“I’d say to work on your presentation, though,” He tells Freddie, to a resounding smack on the arm.

“My cake is an art piece, and it’s bloody well delicious!” Freddie tells him, setting it down on the table.

They gather around it, John wielding a butter knife like it’s a weapon, and serve four even slices on teacup saucers. (All the plates are in the sink - Roger’s turn to do dishes).

Brian eats his birthday cake - Roger, John and Fred doing the same on the couches around him - and he has to agree. It is delicious.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If anybody says I can’t end this on a hopeful note of the guys enjoying a sugar-filled birthday cake, they can throw both their shoes in a lake.  
> I tried to capture the ebb and flow of disordered eating, though what’s displayed here is pretty extreme. A lot of people go without outside help.
> 
> Love you, and if you’re reading this wanting an update on 1 & 3/7ths, pls hold on a bit longer.


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